


these stable things are falling

by explodinganyway



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 02:58:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explodinganyway/pseuds/explodinganyway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>//she is kissing you and you taste the ocean (and red)//</p>
            </blockquote>





	these stable things are falling

1  
Red starts to flush through your home like the walls themselves are blushing. Blood starts to pool like flowers and it’s so stark against white (white tissues, white teeth, white skin, and red). You adapt, learn that she’s better in the mornings when the sun comes through the window like gold and that she’s better with dark sheets on the bed, blood staining too dark and deep with anything lighter. You watch her fall asleep amongst your shadow bed and in the morning, gold overtaking you both, she presses her body into your body. Each part of you both is made up of something insubstantial, something that will break apart if you speak too loudly and so when you come, her mouth hard against your neck and fingers so clever inside you, it’s with a whimper, not loud enough to upset even the sunshine that crests and breaks across you both.

2  
You feel like if you only can dig deeper, can reach further, you will find all the answers. You feel that if you could just rest one hand on her cheek (white skin, and red) and push one hand against her sternum, you can fix her. One hand steady and the other searching and prying and cracking open her chest, pushing through and picking out what makes her, her, and sorting the good from the bad, the sick from the healthy, the wrong from the right. You want to hold her organs and ask her, ‘will you need this?’ liver, ‘will you need this?’ lungs, ‘will you need this?’ heart, hot and slick; the essence of her life, the essence of her, the essence of the blood that is coating the walls (and red). Will she need it? Will she take it back and leave you with nothing but the memory of holding her, and red.

 

3  
On an operating table, Aldous takes a scalpel and cuts a smooth line down your sternum. He roots around and cuts things out and smiles when he tells you that you will be fine without them, completely fine. He puts one hand on your cheek, one hand inside you and you feel your body shudder as he smiles, holds up your heart in his hand. ‘I’m sorry but it’s worthless anyway,’ he tells you, all smiling teeth that are so white that you have to look away. ‘It’s just no good.’

 

4  
At the store Cosima asks you what kind of milk you want and the question brings you up short. There are so many; different brands and then different kinds. Low fat, skim, full cream, soy, almond, high protein. The choices make your brain race, already full of formulas and equations and molecules and how whenever you kiss her, you taste blood and the ocean. You’re not sure if she understands why you can’t speak, can’t decide on a simple answer to a simple question, but she does take your hand and lead you awake from the fridges, milks left behind like standing sentries except for a low fat held tight in her other hand. It seems to be mocking you, mocking how your brain can’t catch up with itself and whenever you look at anything you only see her and if she dropped the milk it would be white everywhere (and red).

 

5  
The light barely reaches your bed and so you don’t bother waking her, just watch. Breath in and out, in and out, just like it should be. Fear has a different meaning these days; not the choking sensation of a bad grade, not the spreading heat of a failed task from Aldous, not the icy feel of his lips against your skin as your life runs faster than you can keep up. No, fear for you now is white and red. You fear touching her, like if you ran your fingers down her skin she would disappear, how if you kiss her mouth it is just the roaring of things you don’t know and red, always red. You do it anyway, touch her. You run your hands across her hard and pull her to you, hips hitting and arms tangled and her, so very real in your arms. You touch her because fear has no place in your lives, because everyone is terrified now and racing around trying to find answers, cures, children. You touch her because you crave the feeling that fear gives you and you are afraid that when things are over, when life calms down, you will still need to feel it. You fear that you will look down from tall buildings longingly and that you will have to dive off every jetty you come across.

 

6  
In the dream you stare at her, want her so much that you have to grip her hips, pull her into you. When you do you know something is off; there are hard planes where Cosima melts into you, dark eyes where hers turn soft. You try to pull away but she kisses you, teeth hard against your lip and you taste blood but it isn’t hers. You try to taste the ocean on her breath but as you search deeper you feel a sudden pain through your back. When you turn around she is there. You wonder how you ever mistook the imposter for her because you look at her and it is like looking into the sun, beautiful but blinding. She lets out a sob and you move to comfort her but can’t because you are coughing, choking and there is red lining your lungs, red staining your hands and you can barely feel the knife in your back as long as you keep looking at her, keep your eyes open.

You don’t wake from the dream when you die, like usual, instead you stand next to Cosima, hold her hand tightly and make sure to catch the worst of her tears. In front of you Sarah is digging a hole and dirt and blood stain her hands in equal measures and you realise that this is what you taste in the back of your throat. You don’t wake until after you have climbed in the grave Sarah has dug for you and you have kissed Cosima goodbye and when you do wake it is with a start and Cosima’s arm thrown across your face, her sweater making you unable to breathe. She shifts when you do and her face is thrown into the barely there moonlight. She is worried and her hands reach for you before you can stop them and they are white, so white that you’re not sure she’s real but then she is kissing you and you taste the ocean (and red).

 

7  
The curtains in her apartment set the stage and every time you retire to bed, you feel like there is an audience just out of reach, holding their breath for something they have never seen before. You never give it to them; most nights are the same routine. You stay up researching, looking at test results like they can give you more answers if you lull them into security. You stay up and she brushes her teeth behind you, warms up milk in her tiny kitchen, smokes a joint and then moves closer. You do go to bed then, when she is slow and warm and tired. You climb into bed beside her and run your fingers over her skin until she is shaking at the sensation, until she can’t hold herself back from turning you over and kissing you until she runs out of air. You hold your breath in these moments too, like her, like the audience, wondering, as always, if hers will stutter back into existence the way it is supposed to. It does, the audience applauds, and you let her fall asleep curled up next to you while you murmur diagnoses under your breath like a prayer.

 

8  
When you kiss her, something in your chest expands until you feel like the sky, and this is how you know you love her. Love like a song on repeat, love like an ocean, love like quietly climbing into your own grave.

 

9  
At twenty, one of your professors tells you something that changes you. It’s not something you think is important at the time but something that trips you up days later, something that hits you when you’re testing the ripeness of an avocado.   
“Every single person wants that job as much as you do. You will never be the smartest person to fill it so, find something that makes you different, that makes you better.” You are smart but not the smartest, driven but not hard enough. You have seen the way people look at you, the way men let their eyes linger and before you consciously choose to play this up, you have already benefited from it. In the lab men blush and stumble over their words or brush against you deliberately and it is not until Dr Leekie has a cool hand running under your skirt that you see the consequences of your choice. You let him though, let him touch and mould you until you can no longer tell right from the black of his eyes, wrong from an ID tag that sticks too easily in your head.

 

10  
She tastes like peaches and smoke and when you’re with her you feel at peace. It is strange when you’re living the way you do; with clones and scientists and good and bad sides (and red). She does though; in her touch is a note on the piano you just can’t find, a dancer at the height of their jump, a scientist who maybe gets closer to finding out the truth, who maybe has the answers. When she kisses you there is silence and a thousand chemicals alighting in your brain and the missing piece between science and poetry and in this space is where you can breathe again. When she kisses you your heart leaps from your chest and there isn’t just the sky but the whole depths of the seas roaring inside you and still, peace. When she kisses you it is with bold hands and shivers through your rib cage and still, peace (and still, red).

 

11  
Maybe love is as deep as oceans undiscovered, is as large as space and expanding, always expanding and maybe that is why you did the things you did. Maybe you can justify your actions and justify your feelings and maybe it doesn’t have to end this way, all burnt up and smelling of failure. Maybe you can help her, love her, and just maybe, be loved in return. You never understood humanity’s fascination with love before; never understood why people wrote about courtship when there was chemistry, marvelled over hearts when there were stars. You understand now though, are obsessed with the idea so much that you whisper the words to yourself at night. I love you. Love you. Love. But you know how these things get done and so you keep it in the small dark space where your heart should be and offer science instead. Offer yourself until, ‘I’m sick Delphine’ (and then red).

 

12  
I the south of France there is a house just big enough for two. The sea air helps Cosima and by the second week you are holding hands and running in the sand. When she collapses into you it is from laughter, not gasping, and her eyes look so mischievous once again. When she kisses you the ocean beside you turns to dust and the waves inside your chest grow until you think you might die unless you can hold just a little bit more of her. In your arms she is pliant but devious and her clever tongue darts out to skim your own. In the depth of the kiss is the ocean once the storm has passed and you love her and you love her (and white).


End file.
